Malacandra.me

Objectively, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times is a cosseted Acela-corridor-dwelling mediocrity who has a long and well-documented history of being wrong about everything and yet makes a fabulous living spinning increasingly ridiculous fairy tales about American politics.

So, after so many years of being so very wrong about everything, why do The New York Times, PBS, NPR and NBC all continue keeping him on payroll and treating him like the High Lama of American Political Wisdom?

As Tali Sharot notes in her book “The Influential Mind,” when you present The New York Times, PBS, NPR and NBC people with evidence that goes against their deeply held beliefs, the evidence doesn’t sway them. Instead, The New York Times, PBS, NPR and NBC they invent more reasons their prior position was actually correct.

Mr. Brooks also says a bunch of other nonsense about the impossibility of anything ever changing until we have a -- surprise! -- grand Both Siderist Synthesis!

Today we need another grand synthesis that can move us beyond the current divide, a synthesis that is neither redneck nor hipster but draws from both worlds to create a new social vision.

Which will never happen because Liberals use facts and facts won't change anything -- including the Moloch-worshiping Gun Nut Party -- until the "culture war" ends:

Progress on guns will be possible when the culture war subsides, but not before.

Of course this is bullshit.

The "culture war" will never end. And yet, while Utopia was not achieved and will never be achieved, after our culture war's bloodiest major conflict, things did change when the Confederacy was destroyed and forced to surrender at Appomattox.

Thing changed after Brown versus The Board of Education of Topeka. They changed after the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They changes after Stonewall. They changed after Loving versus Virginia. They changed after Roe versus Wade.

Do you know how things don't change? By hiding out in your New York Times ivory tower, jerking wistfully off to The New Center's latest Both Siderist porn and collecting a paycheck by telling people they'll just have to wait until the Second Coming arrives with a Grand Hipster Redneck Synthesis in-tow.

Do you know how things do change? When decent people get angry and organized and force the indecent people to stop doing the shitty thing they are doing, whether those indecent people fucking well like it or not.